The week’s passages

Howard Miller, 97, a beloved businessman who ran a dry-goods store in Carnation, supported school athletic programs, wrote newspaper stories about school sports and shared his love of stamp collecting as he volunteered in the schools, died Sept. 23 after a long illness.

Olaf Kvamme, 90, a Seattle Public Schools administrator known for his calm diplomacy during the emotional turmoil of desegregation, and for his leadership in the city’s Norwegian community after his retirement, died in his sleep Sept. 27 in Seattle.

Rheba de Tornyay, 87, the pioneering dean of the University of Washington School of Nursing from 1975 to ’86, who shook up the school, added a doctoral program and raised the school to its national No. 1 ranking, died of breast cancer Sept. 27 in Seattle.

Tom Clancy, 66, a best-selling novelist whose thrillers were made into blockbuster movies — “The Hunt for Red October,” “Patriot Games,” “Clear and Present Danger” — as well as action-packed video games, and whose attention to detail earned him respect inside the intelligence community and beyond, died Tuesday in a Baltimore hospital. The cause was not announced.

Marcella Hazan, 89, the cooking instructor and best-selling author who propelled mid-20th-century America beyond canned Beefaroni to a world of homemade pastas and what she called the “simple, true” cuisine of her native Italy, died of emphysema and arterial blockage last Sunday in Longboat Key, Fla.

Harold M. Agnew, 92, the last surviving major figure to have been present at the birth of the nuclear age — who helped build the world’s first reactor and atomic bombs, helped perfect the hydrogen bomb and led the Los Alamos National Laboratory — died last Sunday in Solana Beach, Calif.

Lt. Gen. Elvin Heiberg III, 81, who rose to the top of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1980s and later expressed regret for failing to fight hard enough to build floodgates that he believed might have protected New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, died of cancer Sept. 27 in Arlington, Va.

Vo Nguyen Giap, 102, the self-taught, relentless and charismatic North Vietnamese general whose campaigns drove both France and the United States out of Vietnam, died Friday in Hanoi.

Chuck Smith, 86, the founder of the Jesus People and the Calvary Chapel movement, and one of the most influential figures in modern American Christianity, died of lung cancer Thursday in Newport Beach, Calif.

Herman Wallace, 71, who served 41 years in solitary confinement and was freed Tuesday when his indictment in the death of a prison guard was ruled unconstitutional, died of cancer Friday in New Orleans. His case drew worldwide attention from those fighting abusive prison conditions.

Abraham Nemeth, 94, the blind designer of the internationally recognized Nemeth Braille Math Code that simplified symbols for easier use in advanced math and science, died of congestive heart failure Wednesday in Southfield, a Detroit suburb.

Israel Gutman, 90, who took part in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, survived three Nazi concentration camps and became a prominent historian of the Holocaust, died Tuesday in Jerusalem.